Rewind
by AnimeDawn
Summary: Poor Wheatley... nothing ever works for him, no matter how hard he tries. But Chell makes it all okay! She helps him get everything he wants - respect, good grades, even love... Oneshot, AU


[Name is required to proceed.]

"Oh, yes. My name is Wheatley."

[Processing… Wheatley. Name not recognized.]

The young man sighed inwardly. He peered over the half-moon lenses of his glasses at a small, white box mounted beside his doorframe. Technical difficulties again, it would seem.

"No, no. You have to recognize my name. I live here. Remember me? _Wheatley._ Try again!"

[Processing… Wheatley. Name not recognized.]

Wheatley frowned and adjusted his glasses higher on his face before leaning in close to the device, his face only a few inches away from the monitor. An image of a female scientist wearing a white lab coat popped onto the screen, her expression cool and calculating.

"Listen up, you… I've gone through this situation so many times I've lost count. I created you, now let me in!" he muttered, quickly leaning back and looking in both directions to see if anyone was coming before moving his face back up close against the device.

[Name not recognized. Please refer to the instruction manual for further troubleshooting assistance.]

Her face still wore the same expression, but now in her hands was a small book with a title that read 'Manual', and she was holding it up for Wheatley to see.

"Yes, I see the manual," he replied, running a hand through his hair exasperatedly, "but I never wrote a manual for this darned thing because I figured that this would never happen!"

[Please refer to the instruction manual for further troubleshooting assistance.]

"Oh come on! Just let me in, will ya!" he exclaimed, "I don't have time for troubleshooting, I just want to get inside my house! Is that too much to ask!"

The woman on the screen blinked a few times and put away the manual in her coat pocket, instead pulling out some kind of notebook and flipping through the pages. A pair of reading glasses materialized onto her face and she looked deep in thought.

[Looking up answer to question. Please hold.]

Wheatley groaned and leaned against the door, slowly sinking down into a sitting position on his cement steps. He remembered what his life had been like prior to when he first built this top-notch security system in university a couple years back. He used to be a nobody, constantly belittled and considered stupid by everyone on the entire campus. Even the teachers were calling him 'impossible to teach' and other worse things. He had hardly any classes left except for Science and English, and he was only one bad pitch away from getting expelled for his inability to learn. It got so bad sometimes that he had actually considered quitting school and quietly doing his own thing back at home. At least there people didn't think he was an idiot, and if they did then they never said it to his face.

It wasn't because he didn't try to do well. Wheatley had tried hard to do well in every class, and if students could be graded on effort alone he would have made an A+ wherever he went. He was so determined to show everyone else that he wasn't a moron, and he _could _do what everyone said he couldn't do, that he practically ran himself ragged with studying. On average he managed to get only 20 hours of sleep per week, including the few days when he had hardly any studying to do. However, despite his constant hard work and overwhelming need to prove himself, Wheatley wasn't doing much better than anybody else on campus. In fact, he was doing a lot worse.

Because of his poor sleep schedule he was falling asleep during class frequently, and when he was woken up from his mini-naps he was always in a sour mood from exhaustion. After a while, he realized that what he was doing was causing his education more harm than good. So he tried cutting back on his study hours and ensuring that he went to bed and woke up at a decent hour every day. But alas, this solved the first two problems and provided no solution to his original one.

It seemed like no matter what Wheatley did, success was always out of reach. He had tried everything he could possibly think of to learn and achieve things that would show others how intelligent he was, but he failed every single time. To be honest, he was beginning to think that everyone was right about him. Maybe he was nothing more than a moron with no brain capacity at all… He was right on the verge of calling it quits when something happened that changed everything.

One day as he was walking to class, one of the jocks from the school football team happened to be at his locker gathering his textbooks for the next class. Normally Wheatley never paid those types of people any heed - mainly because if he even caught that brute's eye he would be thrown into a dumpster quicker than molasses - but this time he couldn't help but stop and stare. There was a girl standing at this guy's locker with him. She must have been a new student, because Wheatley was sure he would have remembered seeing someone as beautiful as her around campus.

She had long, dark brown hair that was tied back in a casual ponytail. Occasionally a strand would fall into her face, and every time she reached back to tuck it behind her ear Wheatley found himself sighing with longing. Her build was tall and slim, but she was anything but frail. He could see her muscles flexing whenever she moved. She could probably beat the crap out of him if she wanted to. Wheatley bent his arm and tried to make his muscles stand out like hers did, but he frowned and let his arm drop to his side when he began seeing the opposite.

Judging from the way she dressed, this girl wasn't one of the rich crowd. She actually had her own style going for her, wearing an orange jumpsuit-like outfit with heavy black boots and a rough leather belt around her waist. Many people gave her weird stares as they passed her in the hall, but Wheatley couldn't imagine her looking better any other way. She didn't seem to care what others thought of her either as she silently laughed when the jock made a joke, or shrugged her slender shoulders in reply to a question. She was completely oblivious to everyone else until she suddenly turned her gaze towards Wheatley.

Since he was watching her the whole time he knew immediately that he had been spotted, so he scrambled to make it look like he wasn't gaping at her. He turned as smoothly and casually as possible on his heel and pretended to be fiddling with the lock on the locker behind him. Wheatley didn't have to touch his face to know that it was burning red. How could he have been so careless! If that jock had seen little old him ogling _his_ girl… Oh, what a mess that would have been. But her eyes… those eyes… There was something in the way she looked at him that made his heart skip a beat. It was almost like she was interested in him, good-for-nothing Wheatley! Was that even possible…?

The more he thought about it, the more he was certain. That look she had given him, it wasn't a stop-staring-at-me-you-twerp sort of look (he knew _that_ particular look very well), but a genuine I'm-interested-in-you look. The way her eyes shone and her lips curled into a positively radiant smile… She had to like him at least, otherwise she wouldn't have given him the time of day. Wheatley was so enthralled by the thought of that new girl possibly liking him that he was taken by surprise when he was lifted straight off the ground.

"Wha…? What's happening…? Oh, wait. Don't tell me that I've finally figured out how to levitate! I knew it was possible!" he said with glee, "Ha! Well, would you look at that! Bloody brilliant! Wait till I tell that pompous science professor how wrong he was!"

"Yeah, but if you want me to help you out with that, it'll cost you extra."

Wheatley's face fell as he looked down to see two enormous hands closed around the collar of his turtleneck. He briefly wondered why he hadn't felt the grip of this guy's hands on his shirt as he was being lifted up. Wasn't paying attention again, he chided himself mentally.

He couldn't see the attacker's face because he was holding him up from behind, but then again it didn't really matter. All jocks were the same when it came to physical strength and proving their masculinity. Well, maybe not _all _of them, but a large number of them anyway. Wheatley sighed heavily. If he was going to get beaten up he wished that it would have happened somewhere else, somewhere far away from _her. _Now she was going to have proof of just how lame he was.

"Oh, h-hello…" he stammered, glancing down and noting that all of his books were no longer in his hands, "So, um… what's the meaning of this then?"

The jock chuckled darkly, and suddenly Wheatley had a fleeting thought of how he was going to die flit through his mind. Swirlies… endless swirlies…

"Just when did you think I'd notice you were trying to break into my locker?" the guy demanded, shaking poor Wheatley roughly, "Next week? Maybe next year? I'm not that dense you know. I'm not _you._"

Everyone in the hallway laughed at that, and Wheatley felt like he was only an inch tall. He glanced over at the new girl and saw that she was looking at him, remorse showing all over her features. She was probably regretting ever showing an interest in him. He could just imagine how disgusted she was with him, the loser of the school, and wondering how she could have let herself get that desperate.

Suddenly emotions began to surface that Wheatley had never felt before. He was angry. Angry at everyone in that whole school for being so condescending, for never giving him a chance. No, angry was an understatement. He was bloody irate. He was also very hurt, because the one person who seemed to like him would undoubtedly think much less of him after this. Everything was going wrong.

Wheatley could feel his control on the situation slipping, and he knew that if someone didn't step in soon he would just let everyone have it. The other students could tell that he was getting angry and they just laughed harder, disbelieving of how much harm he could cause. The laughter bounced and echoed off of the walls and served to fuel Wheatley's hatred towards all of them. That was it. A bomb was about to go off, and anyone caught in the blast was going to suffer. They were going to get it now.

Fortunately, someone very important decided to put a stop to this before something irreversible happened. The new girl frowned, put her books on the floor and walked up to Wheatley, who was far past the boiling point by now. She gave nobody time to ask her what she was doing, and before Wheatley could even utter a single word, she gently cupped his face in her hands and kissed him.

He froze, partially out of shock and also out of sheer disbelief. She had kissed him, and it wasn't just a peck on the cheek, or a tepid sating kiss. She had kissed him full on the lips with vigour, and was still doing it. Only in his wildest dreams had he ever experienced kissing such as this, and real kisses were a million times better than dreams. He swallowed nervously, not wanting to break the kiss but also not willing to ruin it, and tried his best to kiss her back. As it turned out, Wheatley was an excellent kisser. He knew she wasn't misleading him because he had been paying rapt attention to every facial detail she made ever since the kiss began. He knew what signs to look for; she was obviously revelling every single languid moment of it.

The hallways were silent, and Wheatley never even bothered to look at their expressions - although if he did he would most likely have been bubbling over with laughter on the inside. All of the students' mouths hung open, much like that of a gaping fish, and their eyes were huge. Many of them were probably just as shocked as he was that she had kissed the so-called 'moron of the school'.

Without even realizing it, Wheatley's eyes slid shut and his mouth moved over hers passionately. The girl smiled into the kiss and somehow managed to force the jock to put Wheatley down, although this sailed over his head also. His arms acted with a life of their own, slowly snaking around her waist to pull her thin frame even closer to him. He noticed that she was leaning most of her weight against him, and this was pinning him against the lockers. The only reason he noticed this was because a lock was digging painfully into his spine. In any other circumstance he would have loved that feeling, but the pain was distracting him from the pleasure of the kiss. With heavy reluctance, he gradually broke the kiss and grinned lopsidedly.

"Sorry about that. I wanted to keep going, but this lock was boring a hole into my spine, and it was pretty uncomfortable… so… but we can pick this up later, if you want? I'm all for that, you know. Kissing and stuff, I mean. But it's completely up to you! I won't force ya!"

She had burst into a fit of giggles, and Wheatley couldn't understand why. His confused expression just made her giggle even more, and he decided that he liked it when she giggled. So he just grinned and let her get the giggles out of her system.

"Oh, and maybe when you're done with this laughing fit, we can hang out sometime? You know, out of doors maybe? There's this really nice park nearby where you can - Oh! Sheesh, I forgot you don't even know my name yet!"

Finally she seemed to have control of her giggles, but she was still wearing a highly amused grin. Her smile was so infectious that he just had to smile too, and her laugh was even more intoxicating. Wheatley stared at her for a while, all previous thoughts put on hold as he took in the beauty of her. She didn't seem to mind his staring - actually, she seemed to be asking for it as she walked over to pick up her books off of the floor. She bent over to pick them up, and Wheatley just couldn't help himself. He didn't think he was a pervert or anything, but bloody hell… she had a nice ass.

That whole experience had changed his school years permanently. He found out soon after that her name was Chell, and she couldn't speak because she was born mute. That didn't matter in the least to Wheatley though. She became his best friend right away, and this was the whole reason behind his sudden impulse to try harder than ever before to do something completely amazing. With her supporting him 100% of the way, he managed to not only improve his grades, but also to invent a highly advanced security system that instantly became successful. He had proudly showed the prototype to all of his peers and professors, and everyone had praised him on a job well done. That had felt phenomenal since nobody had ever really acknowledged Wheatley as an intellectual individual before.

Afterwards, he found that many of the people who used to think he was stupid almost immediately changed their views of him. He had somehow earned their respect, but for some reason that didn't matter anymore. Chell had become his main priority, his sole reason for waking up each day and going through his often tiresome daily routine before heading exhaustedly back to bed to repeat it all over again the next day. He never complained out loud because he felt it would be childish to do so after all the hard work she had dedicated to helping him graduate, not to mention keeping vigil of the overall cleanliness of their newly rented apartment – and all whilst juggling her demanding career as a high profile CEO for a world-class merchandizing company. She had worked hard her entire life, and she had never uttered a single word about how taxing her job was (well, she literally couldn't say anything either way), and Wheatley wasn't prepared to start that unsavory trend if he could help it. In fact, if his invention did what he hoped it would do in terms of worldwide sales, they could possibly retire early. Quite early indeed!

Unfortunately, that hope had been dashed almost as soon as it had manifested itself in his mind. The security systems had only just hit the market for not even two full weeks and people were already complaining that their faulty systems wouldn't let them into their homes, plus that there was no instruction manual to consort with to solve these issues. Wheatley tried to fix the problems - he even tried to write a manual - but to no avail. It was just too much for one person to do all at once. Unfortunately the security systems began getting uninstalled and millions of people demanded their money back for buying a so-called 'foolproof' system with such obvious issues, so Wheatley had no choice but to pay them back. That was what he was trying to sort out right now, but his security system hadn't been uninstalled yet so he was trapped outside instead of in the house working on his banking.

"Please… let… me… in…" he begged, banging the back of his head against the door with every word.

[Request denied.]

"ARGH!"

It was right about then that Chell pulled up the driveway in her pink convertible Volkswagen Beetle. Wheatley hung his head and groaned. He absolutely hated it when Chell came home to see him locked out like this. It made him feel like an utter fool, and that feeling was none too pleasant.

He heard the car door slam shut and heard her footprints softly trudging across the lawn. He didn't want to look up at her. He knew she wouldn't look down on him for it, but all the same he just wanted to be able to do something _right _for once. He jumped a little as she plopped down beside him, and against his will he looked over at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Hello Chell. Had a good day at work, did you luv?"

Chell nodded, her smile warm and kind. Wheatley felt better already, but that feeling was immediately killed by the security system's sudden output.

[Welcome home, Chell. Access granted.]

"What! How did you…? How come you can't recognize me, but you recognize my wife just fine!"

[Looking up answer to question. Please hold.]


End file.
